Can LAs be replaced with trained monkeys?

Todd DavisIf that headline doesn’t catch your attention, I don’t know what will.

People in the nursery business are rather tolerant folks. For the most part they don’t judge people based on race, creed, sex or fashion sense. But there is one faction in which nursery folks most certainly have preconceived notions. If you’re a member of this group, you have been prejudged.

That group is landscape architects. Or, more commonly called, blankity blank landscape architects.

A breed apart
Should this be the case? I know landscape architects. I’m friends with landscape architects. I’ve had intelligent conversations with landscape architects and I thought, “These folks ain’t so bad.”

But then a commercial landscape job crosses my desk that requires 34 2-gallon dwarf yaupons 36 inches high with an 18-inch spread. I guess I’ll have to source these from the same vendor I’m getting the 6-foot-tall, 5-gallon glossy abelias I saw specified last week.

And the 250 8-inch Bigtooth maples that I need for a job next month. Should I continue?

Acquiring a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture isn’t easy. It takes a lot of brains. Unfortunately, it doesn’t require taking many classes in the horticulture field. Therefore, most LAs out there are lacking in plant knowledge.

That’s why they specify plants with unrealistic dimensions or plants that don’t even exist in commerce.

One of my favorite tricks is when a new cultivar appears in a trade magazine (none better than this one, of course) and instantly LAs across the country are asking for them by the tens of thousands. The problem is that the breeder has the mother plant and maybe 500 3-gallons total, and they won’t be pot full for another three months.

Can LAs be fixed?
If landscape architects are lacking plant knowledge, then education is the key. And, guess what? Nobody is going to educate these LAs if we don’t do it ourselves.

But that’s easier said than done. How much spare time do nurseries and distributors really have? And, let’s face it, when we do have spare time our first thoughts aren’t putting together impromptu meetings with landscape architects to discuss what plant materials they should be using on their projects years down the road.

These meetings are afterthoughts, and that’s the problem.

If you really want to get the attention of LAs in your region, you have to make time. I know plenty of nursery operators that have benefited from reaching out to LAs.

If you have high-quality specimen trees and you can convince an architect they are the best trees for his new building complex, then your material (and only your material) gets specified. And unless some unscrupulous general contractor ignores the mandate to use your trees, you have yourself guaranteed sales.

If you really want to get into the heads of LAs and promote your products, I recommend you attend the American Society of Landscape Architects annual meeting Sept. 18-21 in Chicago. I know plenty of growers who consider this event their secret show to sell an awful lot of plants.

Will I be there? After suggesting that LAs can be replaced with trained monkeys, I think not. Those blankity blank landscape architects would have my hide.